The De'Nauguath Chronicles - Book 1: The Summoner's Daughter

Prologue

The year 6058

Go with them. Take the children and go – NOW.

Michen blinked away a hazy twilight reverie brought on partly from weeks of fitful sleep and partly from the quiet lull of the sea. His temples were still bruised from the force of Vóshana's words. Vóshana had been so insistent and urgent when she'd sent the thought to him that she had seemed far more than human – even more than a human endowed with magic.

It had been restlessness beyond recent events. Most Gorvians had a streak like that now, but they could bottle it, hold it back, even transform it. Vóshana's had leapt to the surface and remained in plain sight. It had gone beyond breaking loose from her normal restraints. It had hovered above and around her like fog in deepest night, and Michen hadn't been able to quell it.

Michen had promised to wait for her before they sailed from Gorvia. If there was enough time for her to risk the journey to the other side of the island, there was enough time to wait for her return. The thought of running away to safety without her – it was worse than the slaughters on battlefields. But Vóshana's temper, shorter and shorter, had become too firm to refuse.

Now, alone despite a ship with several hundred passengers, Michen couldn't put off such thoughts anymore.

War changed everything. A hundred years of open conflict would have broken other nations. For good and bad, procreation had become a symbol of rebellion. Those who wanted to oppose Folan in quiet ways had raised their children to be sturdy and stubborn. Entire generations had come and gone in that way, rising up in waves like wheat in the field only to be crushed into dust at harvest time.

Michen rubbed his eyes as he was forced to ponder the situation yet again.

In their last month on Gorvia, Vóshana's moods had been so contagious that her messages to him lingered as confusing fogs in Michen's otherwise clear and sensible mind. His wife was a true Gorvian native, born and bred in the ways of a people almost as old as the world itself. He was not. He understood as much about Gorvia's tribes and traditions as anyone else, but Vóshana occasionally still managed to surprise him – this time for the worse.

The matter in the north had been too pressing to trust to anyone else, and she'd known it. She had insisted in the furtive, stubborn way so common among war wives and other willful sorts. She had said that it was her turn to take a risk for loved ones. When Michen had calmed her anxiety long enough to ask her how she planned to find him if she was intercepted, she had simply told him that she would bribe another shipmaster and catch Michen's ship mid-journey.

That was yet to happen. No ship had come. No message had drifted on the night air and settled among his dreams. Three weeks in a swift ship had been bleak and long. The children were more and more uneasy, barely quelled by sea dogs' distracting stories of new adventures in new lands.

Michen kept his eyes distant on the sea, but he dug his fingernails into the rail each time his worries cycled around again. The children. His wife. What else could make a seasoned general want to abandon his home? He'd kept his promise to his men, at least: he'd brought his soldiers with him – what was left of them.

So many were gone. So many had disappeared. Chaos had been a good disguise for his greatest failings. He hadn't always sought out the bodies, the hanged men desperate to blot out their sight. Harsher men might have sent mercenaries out for the runaways, but Michen understood too much of their suffering. Aside from anything else, the manpower was too dear for such a move.

Their numbers had never been especially healthy, but the soldiers had generally begun their service as vibrant, competent fighters. They were ending it as broken leftovers of themselves, precious tokens of an arduous resistance. Those tokens had been the last thread to catch and unravel from a ragged shirt.